With the globalization of business, industry and trade wherein transactions and activities within these fields have been changing from localized organizations to diverse transactions over the face of the world, the telecommunications industries have, accordingly, been expanding rapidly. Wireless telephones and particularly, cellular telephones have become so pervasive that their world wide number is in the order of hundreds of millions. While the embodiment to be subsequently described relates to telephone systems, including cellular telephones, the principles of the invention would be applicable to any wireless personal communication device that could be used to communicate in a cellular telecommunications system. These would include the wide variety of currently available communicating personal palm devices or Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), which include, for example, Microsoft's WinCE line; the PalmPilot line produced by 3Com Corp.; and International Business Machines Corporation's WorkPad. These devices are comprehensively described in the text, Palm III & PalmPilot, Jeff Carlson, Peachpit Press, 1998.
The present invention provides a method of intercepting and handling a telephone call directed to an expired telephone number that has been reassigned to a new user without the new user having to handle the call. In many cases, an unlucky user is assigned a telephone number that previously belonged to a user who was delinquent in paying debts or frequently received other similar annoying telephone calls. The user who inherits such a telephone numbers also inherits the annoying telephone calls.
The present invention allows callers to become aware of telephone numbers that have expired and been reassigned to new users. This invention allows the callers to become more productive in seeking the persons they intend to call, and saves the time of the callers and the new users to whom the numbers were reassigned by reducing calls to wrong users.